Relationships

In this chapter, I analyze the impact of MAI on relationships as well as roles within healthcare. I identify three crucial relationships, the therapeutic relationships between doctors and patient, the nursing relationship, and the therapeutic alliance between therapists and patients in mental health. The crucial assumption is that MAI is an artificial agent that breaks up these hitherto dyadic relationships. I discuss several potential roles for doctors, nurses, therapists, patients, and artificial agents and address the question whether healthcare professionals can and should be replaced by MAI. Smart data practices will transform the epistemology of healthcare professionals and the phenomenology of patients and change how healthcare professionals encounter, perceive, and view patients. Since this transformation process affects the clinical encounter, smart data practices will also transform relationships in healthcare. These relationships are heterogenous and complex, since healthcare comprises different professions and contexts. Doctors, nurses, and therapists each form their own specific relationships with patients. Although there is a set of values all healthcare professionals share, like the respect for autonomy or the duty to help, each profession has their specific values and principles. It will therefore be necessary to analyze the impact of MAI on the relationships in each field.